Here’s a look at the first big movie hit of the new year, the feel-good comedy Dancing Queen, starring Hwang Jung-min as a Seoul mayoral candidate and Uhm Jung-hwa as his wife who still hasn’t given up her dream to become a singer, well into her ajumma years. How cute. I love that they turned pop diva Uhm Jung-hwa into a homely-looking ajumma who dreams of being… well, Uhm Jung-hwa, the real-life version.

(...)
Read the rest of Uhm Jung-hwa hits it big with Dancing Queen (285 words)

© girlfriday for Dramabeans, 2012. | Permalink | 33 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Hwang Jung-min, Uhm Jung-hwa

Sometimes movie descriptions are woefully bland and don’t do the project justice, and sometimes they’re delightfully vivid from the first sentence. It’s the latter case for Dancing Queen, the new movie starring pop queen Uhm Jung-hwa and Hwang Jung-min: The wife of a candidate for Seoul mayor becomes a dance singer without her husband’s knowledge, leading to hijinks.

I can see it already, particularly with this spot-on casting. Hwang (Accidental Couple) is so good at playing honest, lovable types that it’ll be a hoot to see him dealing with an errant wife once he finds out what she’s been up to. His character is a poor lawyer who becomes candidate for mayor of Seoul and starts to develop into a serious politician.

(...)
Read the rest of Uhm Jung-hwa turns Dancing Queen for the big screen (178 words)

© javabeans for Dramabeans, 2011. | Permalink | 23 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Hwang Jung-min, Uhm Jung-hwa

Saturday, September 18, was the day of the 18th Icheon Chunsa Film Festival, held in the city of Icheon in Kyeonggi Province. The overwhelming winner was the film Moss, a crime thriller from the director of Silmido starring Jung Jae-young, Park Hae-il, Yoo Jun-sang, and Yoo Sun. It picked up awards in seven categories, including Best Picture and Supporting Actor.

Moss released in theaters in July and is based on the “web toon” of the same name. It was a big performer this summer, logging 3.3 million attendances.

Other notable winners were the war movie Into the Fire, which was given a special jury prize, and Bestseller, which picked up a few awards as well.

(...)
Read the rest of 18th Icheon Chunsa Film Festival (906 words)

© javabeans for Dramabeans, 2010. | Permalink | 26 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Cha Ye-ryun, Choi Jung-won, film festivals, Go Chang-seok, Go Eun-ah, Jo Jin-woong, Song Ji-eun, Uhm Jung-hwa, Yoon Yeo-jung

“폭풍전야” (Stormy Night aka Lovers Vanished)

This is a story about a man (Kim Nam Gil), who after being betrayed by love is falsely accused and put in prison. He escapes with the help of an inmate and sets out on the path of revenge. Yet his desire for revenge starts to fade as another women (Hwang Woo Seul Hye) starts approaching his heart. In a lone restaurant on the beach, the two start a sad “lie-like love story”.

(...)
Read the rest of April Movie Releases (481 words)

© waterleaf for Dramabeans, 2010. | Permalink | 21 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Cha Seung-won, Hwang Jung-min, Hwang Woo-seul-hye, Ji Jin-hee, Kim Nam-gil, Uhm Jung-hwa

Choi Kang-hee is taking a small but crucial role in Uhm Jung-hwa‘s upcoming horror-thriller movie Bestseller, as the voice of a ghost.

According to director Lee Jung-ho, she is a personal friend of him and another producer, and had shown interest in the film from its script stages, which is how she came to join the project in its post-production stages. (This ought to be interesting, because Choi doesn’t have a particularly frightening voice, nor does she have a frightening image. I suppose with a lot of special effects, it hardly matters.)

The movie stars Uhm Jung-hwa as a neurotic bestselling author whose career has been rocked with plagiarism charges. She attempts to make her comeback with a new novel and takes up residence in a secluded house in the countryside, where she starts to have memories of a murder that occurred in this village.

(...)
Read the rest of Choi Kang-hee plays Bestseller’s ghost (106 words)

© javabeans for Dramabeans, 2010. | Permalink | 18 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Choi Kang-hee, Uhm Jung-hwa

Uhm Jung-hwa has a new movie coming out, which has released these stills. The thriller is called Bestseller, which recently wrapped filming, and revolves around a bestselling author who encounters a mysterious incident and chases after the truth.

Her character is a top novelist who had been accused of plagiarism in the past, and works toward making a grand comeback to overcome that stigma. However, when she writes a new novel after being inspired by a story her daughter tells, she once again gets caught up in plagiarism charges.

(...)
Read the rest of Uhm Jung-hwa’s Bestseller (107 words)

© javabeans for Dramabeans, 2010. | Permalink | 25 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Uhm Jung-hwa

On October 8, the 14th Pusan International Film Festival, or PIFF, opened in Busan. (Yes, the city takes a different official spelling than the film festival. Blame inconsistent Romanization.)

As the largest film festival in Korea, it drew a large list of attendees, as you can see from the long list of red-carpet walkers. It was definitely a star-studded opening night, and even included one familiar Hollywood face (Josh Hartnett).

This year’s PIFF features its largest lineup to date, screening 355 films from 70 countries, and closes on the 16th.

(...)
Read the rest of Opening red carpet at the 14th Pusan International Film Festival (241 words)

© javabeans for Dramabeans, 2009. | Permalink | 81 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Byun Jung-soo, Choi Jung-won, Eom Ji-won, film festivals, Go Eun-ah, Go Jun-hee, Ha Ji-won, Han Chae-young, Han Eun-jung, Han Hye-jin, Han Ji-hye, Han Ye-seul, Im Joo-hwan, Im Soo-jung, Jang Dong-gun, Jang Hyuk, Jeon Do-yeon, Jeon Hye-bin, Jo Jae-hyun, Jung Ryeo-won, Kang Ji-hwan, Kim Haneul, Kim Kang-woo, Kim Nam-gil, Kim So-yeon, Kim Yun-jin, Lee Byung-heon, Lee Seon-kyun, Min Hyo-rin, Park Hee-soon, Seo Woo, So Ji-sub, Su Ae, Sung Yuri, Sunwoo Sun, Uhm Jung-hwa, Wang Seok-hyun, Yeh Ji-won, Yoo Hana, Yoo Sun, Yoon Kye-sang

For a movie, that is; it’s not a case of singer and movie star Uhm Jung-hwa putting out her own book.

She stars in the new movie Bestseller, which is the debut feature film for director Lee Jung-ho, who worked as assistant director under Jung Yoon-chul (The Man Who Was Superman). In it, she plays a sensitive, high-strung famous writer who feels she cannot write any more bestsellers. Not much information is given about the plot, but the movie will be in the thriller genre.

Bestseller beings shooting in mid-September.

Uhm Jung-hwa has been extremely busy these days; she recently appeared in the movies Insadong Scandal (with Kim Rae-won) and Haeundae (co-starring Sol Kyung-gu and Ha Ji-won) and the KBS drama The Man Who Can’t Get Married (with Ji Jin-hee). She also has an upcoming released planned in the omnibus film Ogamdo.

Via Cine 21, Joy News

RELATED POSTS

• The man who can’t get ratings
• The Man Who Can’t Get Married: Episode 1
• Sibling rivalries take to the small screen
• Kim Gun-mo cameos as a bad first date
• Production press conference for Insadong Scandal

© javabeans for Dramabeans, 2009. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Uhm Jung-hwa

This is an interesting article, in that it looks at the low numbers faced by current Monday-Tuesday drama The Man Who Can’t Get Married and analyzes it from a cultural perspective. Most low-rated dramas (that aren’t disasters of writing/acting) tend to explain their disappointing numbers in terms of being too complicated for the average viewer or lacking in “makjang” (convoluted, unrealistically dramatic) qualities, but The Man Who Can’t Get Married is a bit different in that it’s also adapted from a Japanese series that enjoyed quite a lot of popularity. So why is the Korean version faltering?

The Man Who Can’t Get Married can’t attract popularity

Hidden birth secrets, mother/daughter-in-law conflicts, a handsome chaebol who falls for an ajumma without reason — it has none of those. All it has is the “man who can’t get married” who has reached the age of forty as a bachelor because of his extremely fastidious temperament.

KBS’s Man Who Can’t Get Married, remade from the popular 2006 Japanese drama of the same name, has been unable to shake off its low single-digit ratings. Compared to other dramas that have been remade from Japanese series like White Tower and Boys Before Flowers, it’s a disappointing result.

(...)
Read the rest of The man who can’t get ratings (560 words)

© javabeans for Dramabeans, 2009. | Permalink | 114 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: drama ratings, j-doramas, Ji Jin-hee, remakes, The Man Who Can't Get Married, Uhm Jung-hwa

First of all, much thanks to Javabeans for letting me commandeer her site so I could post these recaps and putting up with all my questions. Second, I have to say that I’m really enjoying this show much more than I expected. I am watching the show ahead of where I’m writing my recaps, so I’m a few episode past the first one right now, and I will tell you that this show seems to be getting better with each episode, so even if you found the first episode lackluster, you should definitely continue.

Anyways, on to the Ji Jin Hee eyecandy!

Disclaimer: In the interest of full disclosure, I think I should warn everyone right now that I’m a kpop aficionado, and thus, kpop references and comparisons will almost definitely be popping up in my recaps, though I promise to try and keep it only to the really relevant stuff. I also take no responsibility for any harm caused by any pondering I may engage in on certain men and their relative eyecandy-ness.

(...)
Read the rest of The Man Who Can’t Get Married: Episode 1 (174 words)

© Starling for Dramabeans, 2009. | Permalink | 62 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: first episodes, Ji Jin-hee, Kim So-eun, The Man Who Can't Get Married, Uhm Jung-hwa, Yang Jung-ah, Yoo Ah-in